The discussion revolved around one of the most famous recent forgeries of a sacred Judaic text. In January 1907, Shlomo Yehuda Algazi-Friedländer published in Hungary what he claimed were the long-lost tractates of Seder Kodashim of the Jerusalem Talmud, garnering praise in rabbinic circles for bringing this material to light.

I didn't know about this one. The forgery was detected and within months and thoroughly debunked by 1913, so it doesn't seem to have been very good.

Eleni Pachoumi looks at the concepts of the divine in the Greek magical papyri by way of a careful and detailed analysis of ritual practices and spells. Her aim is to uncover the underlying religious, philosophical and mystical parallelisms and influences on the Greek magical papyri. The author starts by examining the religious and philosophical concept of the personal daimon and the union of the individual with his personal daimon through the magico-theurgic ritual of systasis. She then goes on to analyze the religious concept of paredros as the divine “assistant” and the various relationships between paredros, the divine and the individual. To round off, she studies the concept of the divine through the manifold religious and philosophical assimilations mainly between Greek, Egyptian, Hellenized gods and divine abstract concepts of Jewish origins.

It is clear that there was some connection between the inhabitants of the site of Qumran and the scrolls found in the nearby caves. But the exact connection remains much debated. Most scholars think that the Dead Sea Scrolls were deposited in the caves around the time of the Great Revolt against Rome c. 68 CE. But Dr. Cohen-Matlofsky thinks they were placed in the caves over a period of centuries.

For some more-or-less related PaleoJudaica posts, start here and follow the links.

Friday, May 19, 2017

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Alternative Scriptures: Which Old Testament? Philip Jenkins continues his blog series on the discovery of "alternative scriptures" a century and more ago. This time he focuses on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. He has a good review of literature, with many works by R. H. Charles mentioned. He also notes the important work of M. R. James, on whom more here, here, here, and here.

Interest in alternative scriptures actually goes back much more than a century. Johann Albert Fabricius published the first scholarly edition of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in 1713, exactly two centuries before Charles published his famous two-volume collection of Old Testament Apocrypha and Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.

The twenty-first century is looking pretty good for alternative scriptures as well. The two-volume edition of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha edited by James Charlesworth in the 1980s was a massive contribution to the field. Then the first volume of texts for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project (Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1, Eerdmans, ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov) was published in 2013, exactly three centuries after the edition of Fabricius and exactly a century after Charles's edition.

UPDATE: Scholars begin to unlock mystery of lead books ( Paul Handley and Madeleine Davies, Church Times). This is mostly a rehash of the Church Times article noted a few days ago, but it does include some updates on what went on in the AGM of the Centre, which I excerpt:

A summary statement read out at a press conference on Tuesday, answered in the affirmative [that the lead codices are worthy of further study].

[...]

Dr Barker said on Tuesday that she hoped to find a university home for the work in order to engage young scholars, and also to involve experts from a wider range of fields, including astronomy. She would like to see conferences held in Jerusalem and Jordan, and involve people working in the region.

... Dr Barker showed an example of her interpretative process on Tuesday, arguing that the vocabulary emerging referred to passages in Isaiah and Revelation, and Johannine writings.

Dr Barker said on Tuesday that she believed that the books would result in a “paradigm shift” in the understanding of the Second Temple period, as the Dead Sea Scrolls had done.

“The significance for Christians is that we can no longer think that the founders of the Christian faith were humble fisherman in Galilee,” she said. “They were very learned heirs to the Temple tradition.” She referred to Acts 6.7 (“a large number of priests became obedient to the faith”).

The scholars have made several films of their discoveries, which they showed at a press briefing at St Ethelburga’s, London, on Tuesday, and can soon be viewed on www.leadbookcentre.com.

Cross-file under Fake Metal Codices Watch. I acknowledge that various elements of the current discussion may point to some of the codices being something other than fake, but I remain to be convinced. And in any case, I continue to include this cross-file rubric so that all my posts on the subject can be accessed together.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH? Jewish Mystics Hope Trump’s Israel Visit Might ‘Raise The Temple.’ (Sam Kestenbaum, The Forward). Third Temple activists are hoping that President Trump will visit the Temple Mount and endorse their project. I agree with the article that neither is likely. He seems to be planning to visit the Western Wall, but that is as far as it will go.

Again and again and again: I oppose all efforts to rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount. No excavation or construction on the Temple Mount! Not even archaeology, until we have non-invasive and non-destructive technologies to do the work.

... The highly anticipated official publication of these rare and fragile antiquities will appear as a volume in the prestigious Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project series in 2017.

The publication was prepared in collaboration with an editorial team at Princeton Theological Seminary headed by James H. Charlesworth, Ph.D., George Collord Professor of New Testament. This volume will join other recently published volumes of Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the Schøyen and Museum of the Bible collections.

On the contents of the fragments:

Among the five ancient fragments are portions from the book of Leviticus, the book of Deuteronomy, and the book of Daniel, inscribed at about the time of Christ or within a century earlier. It is possible that the Daniel fragment owned by APU is the world’s oldest existing manuscript of Daniel 5:13-16.

Of the significant findings, „The university’s Deuteronomy 27 fragment features a unique reading in verse 4 that agrees with the Samaritan Torah. This will give scholars new insights into the relationship between Judaism and Samaritanism in antiquity,” said Karen Winslow, Ph.D., professor and chair, biblical and theological studies in the Azusa Pacific Seminary.

Past posts on the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments held by Azusa Pacific University are here and links. The fragments will be on public display next week.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

The advert also announces that Professor George J. Brooke, who recently retired from the University of Manchester, will be at the University of Groningen as the 2018 Dirk Smilde Fellow from January to June 2018. Congratulations to Professor Brooke and to Groningen!

Classical texts taken from 52 Greek and Roman sources; appendices on Linear B, inscriptions, and papyri; and a new (in the second edition) appendix of ancient Near Eastern myths. The latter include the Gilgamesh and Atrahasis versions of the Flood story, material from the Enuma Elish, a Hittite myth, and Genesis 1-9. Good stuff.

THE JESUS CREED BLOG: Loosening the Messiah (Scot McKnight). A review of Matthew Novenson new book, The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users (OUP 2017). Excerpt:

Second, his approach is to go to the texts and particularize, contextualize, individualize the messianic texts — those that actually mention “messiah” — and so connect each messianic text to its social setting. The result is not a messianic idea that is a synthesis of all the messianic texts, which is more or less what happens many times when people construct a messianic idea, but instead a term — messiah — that has very little meaning apart from the particular context in which it occurs.

Dr. Novenson is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh (New College). A review of his first book, Christ Among the Messiahs, was noted here. He was also a plenary speaker at the St. Andrews Symposium on Divine Sonship last June.

PRESS RELEASE: Christopher Woods appointed director of the Oriental Institute Professor Woods is a Sumerologist. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago shows up frequently in PaleoJudaica posts. Professor Woods replaces archaeologist Gil Stein, who has been director since 2002. Congratulations to Professor Woods and to the Oriental Institute.

PHILOLOGOS: The Gematria of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Fun with Hebrew numbers (Mosaic Magazine). Despite the clickbait title and provocative opening, this is a nice introduction to the ancient art of "gematria." This art is based on the fact that each letter in the Hebrew alphabet also has a numeric value. Gematria involves adding up the total numeric value of all the letters of a word or phrase, finding another word or phrase with the same value, and drawing conclusions about the first in light of the second.

Philologos notes that gematria goes back at least to the Talmud. It may be much older. In the late first century CE, the author of the Book of Revelation was adding up the value of a name and using that as a secret code. This isn't precisely gematria, but it is playing with the same ideas.

Many years ago Philologos had another column on gematria in The Forward, but the link to that one has rotted. Other past PaleoJudaica posts on the subject are here and here.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Developmental Composition of the Bible in View of Qumran. A review by David Sigrist of Ulrich, Eugene, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible, VTSup 169 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). The biblical scrolls from Qumran show that textual criticism bleeds into redactional criticism and even source criticism. Each is its own discipline, but they are on a continuum. Septuagint studies are relevant for all three as well and complementary to Qumran studies.

This sounds like a fascinating and useful book.

Earlier essays in the AJR series on the Dead Sea Scrolls (in honor of the 70th anniversary of their discovery) are noted here and here and links.

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: The Christian Monks Who Saved Jewish History (Malka Z. Simkovich, Lehrhaus). HT Mosaic Magazine. This article deals with St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai and Mount Athos Monastery in Greece. Scribal monks did indeed save much ancient Jewish literature from oblivion.

That said, the examples given are mostly problematical. It is debatable whether Joseph and Aseneth is a Jewish work. The Greek Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, including the Testament of Levi, draw on some Jewish texts, but are Christian compositions. It is correct, however, that the Testament of Levi manuscript from Mount Athos contains (in Greek translation) some verbatim material that is otherwise only known from Aramaic Levi.

The Testament of Solomon is a Christian composition. The Testament of Adam probably is as well. It is not clear whether the Testament of Job is a Christian or Jewish composition.

There are undoubtedly Jewish texts that survive in Greek and were transmitted only by Christians. These include Greek translations of the Book of Watchers and of the Epistle of Enoch (both from 1 Enoch), the Letter of Aristeas, 3-4 Maccabees, and, as the article does mention, the works of Philo and Josephus. But I'm not sure how many of these, if any, survive in manuscripts specifically from these two monasteries.

My caveats aside, it is always good to see the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha getting some attention. Hopefully a more nuanced understanding will filter out into popular coverage in due course. And, as I said, the main point of this article does stand. For some bibliography on the topic of the provenance of such texts (by me) see the list here.

For much more on St. Catherine's Monastery and its manuscripts, start here and follow the many links. And for more on Mount Athos Monastery (and its cats!), see here.

One of my students did a seminar paper on this topic in that aforementioned (in the preceding post) Ancient Jewish Literature course this semester. The class was persuaded that the archaeological evidence did not support Josephus's account of a mass suicide. His account is incoherent in other ways as well. He claims that it was only the men who were present at Eleazar ben Yair's final speeches, and they are specifically addressed to the men only, yet supposedly a surviving woman gave a full account of them. And it makes no sense that the Romans succeeded in burning down the last defensive wall and then went back to their camp to sleep until morning. Meanwhile the rebels all quietly committed suicide and no Roman watchmen noticed. And so on.

The seminar paper also evaluated Josephus's account of the fall of Gamla in light of archaeology, and came to similarly skeptical conclusions about the its reliability.

I have collected past posts on a variety of topics related to Masada here. Past posts that deal specifically with problems with Josephus's account of its fall are collected here.

Scriptural interpretation in Second Temple Jewish texts and the Talmud sometimes gives the appearance of arbitrary eisegesis. Nevertheless, these exegetes worked with a clear set of rules that made perfect sense to them. They belived that all scripture was revealed by prophetic inspiration. Therefore every word was meaningful and nothing was accidental. And any scriptural passage could potentially be used to interpret an obscurity in any other passage. A favorite way of doing this was to take a difficult word in one passage and interpret it in light of how it is used in another passage (the "catchword" principle.

Some of their conclusions seem ill-founded from our historical-critical perspective today, but they believed that they were being logical and rigorous in their exegesis.

We spent quite a bit of time looking at the exegesis of scripture in my course on Ancient Jewish Literature from 1 Enoch to the Mishnah this semester.

Past PaleoJudaica posts on the Magdala Stone are here, here (with a photo), here, and follow the links. Past posts on the “Menorah: Cult, History and Myth” exhibition by the Vatican and the Jewish Museum of Rome, which opened yesterday, are here and here.

TOURISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY: JNF opens ancient caves from era of Bar Kokhba revolt (Dan Lavie,Israel HaYom). The complex of caves used during the Bar Kokhba Revolt at Khirbet Burgin at the Adullam Grove Nature Reserve was opened to the public over the weekend (and beyond?). This seems to have been in honor of Lag B'Omer, although this article doesn't specify this. The Bar Kokhba-era caves at the Adullam Grove Nature Reserve have been known for some time. See the posts from 2004 here and here. The area was also in the news recently for its ancient Jewish pyramid.

An article by Yisrael Katzover in Hamodia seems to think that new caves from the period have just been discovered: Caves Uncovered from Bar Kochva Period. But that doesn't seem to be the understanding of the Israel HaYom article. Such caves have been excavated recently at at Ramat Bet Shemesh. Adullam Park is nearby, but I have not seen reports of any new caves there.

Films are well and good, but any real advance on the state of the question needs to come from publications in peer-review venues. As I have said before, the evidence I have seen so far makes me think the codices are clumsy modern productions. I published a detailed statement on them a couple of months ago: The Jordan Department of Antiquities disavows the lead codices. At present I have nothing to add. Follow the links there for many past posts on the subject.

As always, I will have a look at what the Lead Books Centre has to say, but I encourage the members to move the discussion into the realm of real scholarly publications.

Cross-file under Fake Metal Codices Watch. I acknowledge that various elements of the current discussion may point to some of the codices being something other than fake, but I remain to be convinced. And in any case, I continue to include this cross-file rubric so that all my posts on the subject can be accessed together.

While we're on the subject of "sources," a diplomatic tempest over the Western Wall seems now to have been resolved: White House Clarifies Western Wall Position with JewishPress.com (Hana Levi Julian). Whoever told Israeli officials that the Western Wall "is not in your territory" was not giving "the position of this administration."

Background on the exhibition is here. A few other recent posts on the lost Temple menorah are here, here, and here. Follow the links in those posts for much more on the Temple menorah and on ancient menorahs in general.

UPDATE: Incorrect link now fixed!

Just to be clear, my comments above were directed at the claim that the Vatican knows something it isn't telling about the fate of the golden menorah looted by the Romans from the Jerusalem Temple. There is no reason to think the Vatican has the menorah or any special information about it. Follow the background links above for details.

The exhibition sounds very informative about the history of the menorah in general.

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Alternative Scriptures: From Qumran to Christ. Philip Jenkins has dug up (heh) some early twentieth century scholarship on the Qumran sect. The sect was already known from the Cairo Geniza manuscript of the Damascus Document. Some quite reputable scholars were publishing unwarranted speculation about a direct Christian connection with the sect.

It goes to show how easy it is to take exciting new sources and draw inferences from them which go beyond the evidence. There has still been plenty of that after the discovery and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Past posts in Professor Jenkins's series on "Alternative Scriptures" have been noted here and here.

Relevant, but not mentioned, is Jacob Neusner's proposal about the Pharisees. He argued that they made it a condition of their group that lay people follow the Priestly laws as though they were priests serving in the Temple. Their perspective formed the foundation of rabbinic Judaism.

For past posts on Herod the Great, start here and follow the links. Posts on Herod Agrippa I are here, here, and here. A post on Herod Antipas is here. Past posts on Salome, daughter of Herodias, are collected here. And for possible "composite Herods" in Luke-Acts, see here.

PALAEOGRAPHY: Kharoshti: Story of the ancient scripts (Iqbal Ahmad, Kashmir Images). (An article mostly based on the Wikipedia article on the same subject.) This gives a brief account of the story of Kharoshti, an ancient Indian script based on the Aramaic alphabet. It was used to write texts in Sanskrit and related dialects. A cache of Buddhist manuscripts written in the Kharoshti script (the Gandhāran Buddhist texts) was discovered in Pakistan and was given to the British Library in 1994. The manuscripts date to the first century CE, around the same time as the Dead Sea Scrolls.